Monday, September 14, 2009

Stalled out


This blog completely stalled out this summer, mainly due to lack of reliable internet. Living on an island greatly reduced my access to day-to-day communication. Without cable or internet, I lost myself in the calm of summer. I have emerged a little wary of the "real" world- a place where everyone moves a little faster and I am bombarded with more visual stimuli than I can truly take in. Granted, island life is not all calm, there are tourists everywhere and the occasional heated word, but for the most part everyone was content to go to the beach and just relax.

So what did I do with my free time? I managed to read a record number of books (17), all of them fiction and all of them pleasurable. A few highlights:
Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind: a great mystery set in post Civil War Barcelona.
Joe Meno's The Great Perhaps: Meno is one of my favorite authors and this novel about family dynamics lived up to my expectations.
Tanya Egan Gibson's How To Buy a Love of Reading: I finished this in less than 24 hours, just to get to the end, which I thought fit the book well. This could've been one of those books that is well written up until the last 20 pages, but managed to wrap up well.
Guillarmo Del Toro's The Strain: Another 24 hour read, I cannot wait for this to be made into a movie, the book had great pacing. Zombie vampires, a great concept.

I also managed to plow through F Scott Fitzgerald's collected works, my favorite being
This Side of Paradise, his first novel. It fit my current time of life, as it focuses on the college years and the overwhelming confusion you feel.

I am back into design thinking mode. This year is focused on bringing together all the skills we've already learned. Three major projects are already in the works, along with my elective studio work. I'll be posting progress later this week.

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